Category: zombies

In December 2013, Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, Europol, the FBI, and other technology companies sought to take down one of the world’s largest botnets named ZeroAccess (also known as max++ or Sirefef). While the collaboration led to the disruption of ZeroAccess, the takedown was not fully successful as several servers hosting botnet’s command & control (C&C) continued to remain active.

Ever since its discovery several years ago and leading up to 2013, over two million computers globally had been infected. This led to search results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo! being hijacked, which redirected infected users to malicious websites and in turn, impacted the advertising revenue stream on these search providers. In fact, it is estimated that the cost of click fraud, as a result of ZeroAccess, was upwards of $2.7 million each month for online advertisers.Continue Reading… ZeroAccess Botnet: Is It Preparing Its Next Attack?